Hardware failures at the main server when it got it’s 3 monthly reboot. Problem with a hard disk failure and the RAID not quite working as expected so it didn’t drop the affected disk neatly. And there was a problem anyway with the remote access to the BIOS to change the array. Not to mention that the browsers are getting VERY paranoid about running Java applications.
I’d already managed to destroy (damnit!) the warm backup system (one of my home systems) with an ill-timed screwup a few days ago. Played with QFlash after setting everything up for the new IP address that I got after we moved. It seemed to trash a pile of files on the boot partition. I was actually working on repackaging it…
So I pushed the backups of data, images and code to the cold server, and went to bed at 0300.
I do have to work as well and time is tight. So decided this morning that I would let the hosting techs deal with the hardware in the morning. If everything turned to custard on the drives, I would head home early to kick the cold server into action. It is a pretty small virtual server so capacity wise, I’d have to watch it – something I am loath to do at work.
So I spent this morning and part of the afternoon silently remotely monitoring an increasingly frustrated tech working his way through the process of finding what in the hell was wrong. I could watch him working his way through the bios and booted tools. Nice toolset (I want…)
Pain being out for just over 12 hours. But we’re volunteers and usually short of time and cash. I’d love to have a dedicated warm backup server – but the budget doesn’t stretch that far at present.
Ummm need some more sleep. The coding is a bit sluggish right now.
I will make a donation and I suggest everyone else does the same.
Just think. In the past we paid Wilson and Horton to feed us with tory propaganda. Why not pay the standard to feed us real news and community interaction?
You mean if we donate they will change and start providing us ‘Real news’, where do I sign up? Would be a refreshing change, although I am thouroughly entertained with the current red tinted view of the world.
We don’t provide “news”. Mostly we provide “opinion” with a few facts interspersed and people commenting do the same. Of course the former is pretty much a job description of a journalist. They just have to get used to the blowback (the latter).
Many of them seem to have a problem with that. Personally I think that it will do them quite a lot of good.
But you have yet to tell us what you think – currently you perform the role of useless carping critic with not notable skills. This is merely my opinion, but I suspect it is because you are somewhat too stupid to think.. But is does provide us with a lower benchmark to measure ourselves against. (my nana always told me to look for what people were good at…)
They aren’t a one off cost like buying a machine. It is actually the bandwidth that costs the most over time directly and indirectly.
These days we have a dedicated server running in NZ that costs about ~$333 per month ($290+GST). Traffic is unlimited inside NZ as (a major part) of the server cost, but costs $2/GB for offshore above our limit of 25GB. We typically do somewhere between 180GB and 300GB per month in local traffic (subject to cloudflare)…
We’d typically do between 50 and 150GB in overseas traffic if it is left unconstrained – mostly to spambots, searchbots, and RSS feeds. That is where we get pinged pretty badly. It is all the more annoying because more than 95% of the human clients are inside the NZ net.
So we now have cloudflare ($US 20 per month) which caches the static parts of the site like images and pushes almost all of the traffic local and overseas back on to the Southern Cross cable that the 25GB limit is meant to ration usage of. It also slows the site compared to being on the local net. But it makes our bills a lot more manageable. We effectively feed cloudflare mostly text (because they cache the rest) and they feed that and the cached images to everyone else from multiple servers worldwide.
I also have my home system that these days could handle the traffic load for a few days with cloudflare assisting. Probably more so once the fibre arrives near the door in December. But residential bandwidth is pretty expensive. I usually run that ‘warm’ with a copy running in near real time to the main server with a replicated database and rsynced directory.
And there is a cheap virtual server that sits cold and can be upgraded easily. I mostly use it for out of NZ storage of backups. But has probably been too problematic to run for a number of years as an active server because of CPU usage. The caching from cloudflare may change that and the reason to site in NZ (speed to NZ users) is now moot as we have to run everything from offshore because of the costs of overseas traffic…
We actually make enough from the advertising. However it is somewhat unpredictable when the money arrives. So we concentrate on keeping the costs down.
So a backup server would involve a monthly outlay for bandwidth?
Another $333-odd per month? Ouch!
What happened to the previously user-friendly donate page? I don’t have a smart-phone so can’t use an app.
It’s a wee bit of a disincentive, those without the relevant tech or telebanking having to traipse down to the bank. However will make the effort…
Welcome back The Standard. Thanks for getting her going again Lprent.
The good news is that one Pagani is gone from Labour. It’s far too early to feel anything like optimism about the largest opposition party thus far, but it is good news none the less.
It seems fitting that he’s gone to represent mining interests. Not as fitting as going on a benefit would have been, but of course years of making contacts amongst the rich and powerful go a long way even amongst the ignorant and inept.
ps, my computer kept up a facsimilie of the site from after I turned the computer off last night. Something called cloud fare. Frankly I won’t be surprised if one day the computer starts turning on the kettle of its own accord before I get up in the morning, such are the marvels of technololgy…
Well, 25 odd years ago he was much younger and maybe more radical in his thinking. I did the opposite… started out quite conservative and went further to the Left the older I became.
Aye tis good news. Now hopefully the leader can be given speeches that sound like they were written for the leader of the Labour Party and not for some pale blue tosh.
The above links to a story about The Dowse Gallery being challenged over restrictions to its patrons. I entirely agree with the opinion of the blogger. After watching the 3news video linked to in the piece, I have a question.
On the subject of social privileges, do you think a journalist who watches a restricted artwork and reports its contents to everyone, disrespects the wishes of the artist and participants?
In a world where many fail to recognise the existence of social privileges, I might appear to be looking a little too closely, but it seems that 3News have an opportunity to learn from this too, not just Paul Young and friends. If you are a journalist, you have power to communicate far outside the ability of average people. If someone sees the video and tells their friends what was in it, that is acceptable and the artist would expect it. But if you do it purposely on national TV because you can, for money, for reputation, because it’s the “outrage story” of the moment, then you’ve crossed the line. Especially if one of the defining features of the work has a religious element.
You could say, ah yes but critical reviews are normal, journalists report, what’s the problem?
Normal to who? Are they normal to Muslims? Far as I know, they are not. Isn’t this all about the right way to cross lines? Muslims that challenge Islamic thought must follow strict processes and none of them are anything like the freedoms of journalistic privilege in a western world. If the artist has an agreement with the gallery to uphold certain cultural ideas, then a journalist who wanders in and is allowed to circumvent those agreements hasn’t checked their privilege or extended any courtesies. The gallery could also be at fault here, by simply forgetting about dominant culture, but there is no proof for behind the scenes events.
Yes but artists get criticised, their work is reviewed, it’s normal, how can you say it would be unacceptable, you’re a crazy PC femnobot!
The artist drew explicit lines before the work was offered for viewing. The gallery accepted those terms, potential patrons knew the terms. Anyone who knew the terms and broke them committed a violence. Ill-gotten gains, receiving stolen goods, legal entrapment, blackmail, are all generally viewed as unacceptable in mainstream white culture. In order to maintain the moral high ground, we have to be sure we don’t commit any immoral acts along the way, ourselves.
In this case, did the journalist misuse the privilege of being allowed to see the video by then clambering over the artist’s work with their own culture (the self importance of “being the first to view”) and privilege (the ability to address thousands or millions with a review), setting up a situation where the description wrongly tore away some of the privacy necessary for the installation to retain its natural integrity?
Has the work now been compromised by that rough description, not because of the description per see, but the way the review was undertaken?
For example, the journalist could have chosen to re-iterate the description given by the artist or gallery, or simply smiled and said, “Well I guess you blokes will never know. But it’s good.” instead of a pop culture analogy. Is there now the suggestion that the work has been judged by mainstream popular white culture as “nothing to get worked up about”? Cheapened by comparing religion, art and Islamic culture to an afternoon with the Kardashians? To be able to make such an analogy could suggest that any subtle messages in the artwork went totally over the viewer’s head, but that doesn’t mean the work hasn’t been labelled to invite prejudice.
And if the artwork is “nothing to get worked up about”, does that help to muddle and sideline the central issue of privilege, allowing uninformed people to think this is just a case of PC Gone Mad? Does it make the job of attacking the artwork, artist, Muslims, women, minorities, human rights and the gallery, easier? Did the journalist commit a form of cultural violence/undermining brought about by unexamined privilege?
NB: The journalist was a woman, naturally, otherwise she couldn’t have seen the video. I do not in any way suggest that because a journalist, who is a woman, may have done something wrong, that now every man and his dog is justified in doing as they please and that all issues of privilege are now void. These questions are to examine journalistic ethics (that will no doubt make some people laugh), identifying privilege and using privilege constructively.
been there while TS down, may not be my cup of tea
whole lotta questions to be subsumed above
hope you got the Very Excellent for *natural history* item
Early Mousterian man-50,000-100,000 ya
currently we share probably 96% material with our hirsute companions
yet
35M single-nucleotide changes represent about 1% of genome
yet
the proteins directly coded by genes are highly conserved (29% identical, rest differ maybe two aminos on average)
Then, there is those pesky ancient repetitive elements (Are’s)
check out mice
i am not paying to read the herald online, passed over enough money to feel unwell
On the subject of social privileges, do you think a journalist who watches a restricted artwork and reports its contents to everyone, disrespects the wishes of the artist and participants?
I was a little uncomfortable with this, but I don’t think it really breached the spirit of the request that only women view the exhibit. Plenty of articles had already said “they’re getting ready for a wedding, putting on makeup, etc” – the fact is that only the journalist saw the women unveiled, she didn’t name them or publish images of them.
Someone with more knowledge of the culture would be able to say if they think it’s disrespectful or breaching the spirit of the women’s privacy.
Yeah, I/S has a good write-up about that over on No Right Turn. Can’t say that I’m surprised – it’s what you get from a bunch of dictators upset that democracy is taking their wealth streams from them.
Same old Democrat centre right economic policy, leavened with delicious cluebatting of the Tea Bag Party’s abysmal failures to understand economics101 and why co-operation has empirically better outcome than teh GOP’s current “everyone for themselves!” meme. Plus the usual highlighting of why civil rights matter in terms of preventing people being part of society and how various aspects of poverty have very negative outcomes for the USA. With a big freaking dose of “I do give a fuck about these issues” and humour.
And amusingly the GOP response has been mostly silence with the Tea Baggers going all a twit’ with ZOMG: “DEMOCRATS BOOED GOD!”.
Has Obama fucked up? Yeap, a lot of the Republican’s are lost cases and should have never had any positions of responsibility in the Obama Administration concerning anything to do with science. Then there’s the continued use of Bush era laws to hide government actions and allow violations of civil rights both in and outside of the USA, slow movement at the federal level on LGBT rights plus the bailout. On the other hand though, the GOP has lost it’s brains completely and utterly, so a Mitt Romney presidency + Paul the Granny Starver Ryan etc is pure doom…
Not too sure why everyone thinks the sun shines out of WJC’s ass.
The economic boom during his presidency was more apparent than real, largely created by housing booms and the the expansion of credit, with a hell of a lot of people being left behind. His welfare reforms hit the poor extremely hard leading to hardship, creating a new underclass and the jobs kept streaming offshore.
I dont rate him at all really. He is no Roosevelt (the all time best), Kennedy or even a Johnson.
Wow! wotta day. be wary that habits do not form u. (no standard to continue on reading)
ya know, it is just one freakin thing after another with NZ
most here are literary, have a gander at the first paragraph of Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….Light…..Darkness…..we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..”
i regularly meet and encounter many middle-aged adult New Zealanders who do not have literacy above early intermediate level, of all ethnicities
I love watching Rachel Smalley on channel 3; i suspect she has a compassionate heart and leanings in our direction, but that is only speculation, and we all know what that’s about, know do we not?
Putin was wonderful to watch on RT today, particularly when compared and contrasted with print articles regarding his veiws today also
i check out NEWS NOW online occasionally, that covers the zeitgeist; today highlighted the U.S-Israel “spat” (clever journalism) over Iran, ya get corroborating perspectives, ya get the drift,
anyway, Putin highlighted the present Russia-China relationship, characterised by him as “at an unprecedented high….of mutual trust…developed over 1000’s of years
meanwhile the signal being sent by Singapore at the Communist Party School lectures is that there be equivalent relationships with u.s and China (they continue to benefit)
likely successor to the Party is at school there i believe. Yup
Putin-“drugs from Afganistan increase 60% in the last year, wtf? are there not a lot of international military types there? and it is continuing to flood Europe.wow! revenge is a dish best served up Cold
these freakin fasci…was one myself once…that is wot ‘appens when you wanna be your own god,
oi oi oi
well, bound because individually they are weak and fragile, been there had the patches, weirdos
Act 1: 18, (With that reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out…)
yes it is the NIV, so every one who is able and chooses to can read the freakin thing, priest…
28, You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.
I met some Beautiful maori people at a small fellowship last night
formerly they were down, and out
Now, Beautiful People, as they were to be
Maori People are Beautiful People with challenging Big Hearts
ol Martin Luther aye? some Dread
Day-Hebrew-‘Yom’ is used in different senses in the Genesis story
ex-nihilo-from nothing-go there
remember proximate cause and Ultimate cause (Aristotle)
‘pretty’ Lamarckian
then there is Ichneumonidae-Darwin could not really understand those but we can, can we not
do you know, some dinosaurs had rheumatic joints (in the fossil record)
There is at least 12 to follow around these here parts (purty Lamarckian)
joe, CV, D, Board, Dr, Murray, Olwyn, Carol, Rosie, Iprent, QoT(if your cup of tea, important work) and U-Turn, so follow McFlock to Sanctuary
Pr 1:17- How useless to spread a net in full view of the birds! These men (gender neutral nowadays)
lie in wait for their own blood;
I was at the airport the other day, and happened to see Jerry waddling towards me, I said “Jerry Brownlee”, he looked at me, and as I had his attention I said “You fat fuck” … he said “Thank you” about 10 – 20 people were in hearing distance, I wish every politician would was shown that much respect each time they went out in public, then maybe their egos wouldn’t be so big.?
Listening to yet more reports on the US Democrat convention, I was thinking about how so much of our news comes from the US (as well as the UK). But even strong lefties spend a lot of time discussing US political issues. Undoubtedly, its imperialistic power mean that it has a big influence on our lives. But, I decided I’d like to hear more from other countries we might learn from, such as Scandinavian and South American countries.
First I did a search on news from Finland. I did notice that it’s economy is experiencing some contraction right now. However, I also found this interesting op ed on Finland’s education system (albeit in a US newspaper), and why it is so successful.
The author, Pasi Sahlberg, is director general of Finland’s Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation. He has served the Finnish government in various positions, worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. and for the European Training Foundation in Italy as senior education specialist.
Sahlberg describes Finland as a very competitive ‘market economy’ (a negative I’d have thought), but also says that,
Finland has come to be known as a nation where educational quality, equity, and productivity exist simultaneously.
He identifies 3 main provisions that ensure all Finnish children get a good education. But he also identifies an underlying reason why those provisions have been made: the relative gender equality, with significant numbers of women in top positions in central government, public life and commerce. He quotes Education historian Diane Ravitch, who criticises the corporatisation of US schools, reforming the schools along the lines of business practices, as being carried out by the “Billionaire Boys’ Club.”
The 3 fundamental provisions he identifies are:
1)
the support parents receive from the health care system prior to and right after the birth of the child. Welfare policies in Finland guarantee free health care for the mother and her infant. Parents are also issued a fully paid 12-month parental leave that parents must share between one another
2)
the country’s early childhood development and care system that is accessible to all families.
3)
a strong, systematic focus on child well being once formal schooling begins. For example, every school must have a Pupil Welfare Team that deals with all possible issues related to children’s learning, development, behavior or health in school and at home.
… Moreover, a free hot and healthful school lunch for all children has been a norm in all Finnish schools for 70 years.
Sahlberg says that,
What distinguishes Finland from the United States and many other nations in child well-being policies is accessibility and affordability. In Finland, all children and families have the same right to childcare, health and educational services regardless of socioeconomic status. Another difference is that the primary purpose of early childhood education in Finland is not to enhance children’s readiness for school. It is to support families in raising healthy and happy children.
I am having trouble putting in a proposal to the MMP Review on their web site on this the last day. The 7th September is stated but not a finishing time that I could see and there does not seems to be any box to enter a proposal on line – as if that has been withdrawn although it is before 5.30 pm and I think it should be open to midnight.
Also it is strange that a late proposal is dated 5.59 pm when the time is still about 5.30 pm.
The one before is 5.58pm. It’s almost as if times are being allocated rather than recorded.
SEPTEMBER 06, 2012 Why Desmond Tutu is Right About Bush & Blair Inside the CIA Dossier on Iraq
by VIJAY PRASHAD
Last week, Bishop Desmond Tutu was to sit beside former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at the cringingly named Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. Tutu, one of the main moral voices in the anti-Apartheid struggle, decided to withdraw. He could not stand to sit next to Blair, or to Tony’s mate, George W. Bush because they had “fabricated the grounds [for war on Iraq] to behave like playground bullies.” Stingingly, in The Observer (September 1), Tutu recounted how he had called the White House a few days before the 2003 invasion, spoke to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and asked her to give the UN weapons inspectors more time to do their work. But “Ms. Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.” The US and UK went to war, and according to Tutu, “More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.”
Amnesia over Iraq has already set in. President Obama refused to countenance any prosecution for Bush era officials (and Bush himself) for the fabrications that Tutu alleges. In the UK, the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq War has finished its deliberations, but Sir John Chilcot has delayed the release of the final report for a full year because of wrangling to prevent Blair’s private letters to Bush from being revealed (he perhaps does not want to allow validation that in a July 2002 note he wrote, “You know, George, whatever you decide to do, I’m with you). At his appearances at the Inquiry, Blair admitted that the Iraqis were continuing to allow weapons inspectors, and that, as Sir Lawrence Freedman suggested, they had “started to reap dividends.” However, Blair worried that Saddam was “back to his old games” and was not capable of a “change of heart.” In his paper-thin memoirs, A Journey, Blair notes the question of regret for the war should not be a public question, but it can only be asked and answered “in the quiet reflection of the soul.”
If this were a universal standard, then Syria’s Bashar Assad can relax, and so should all those who are threatened with arrest and trial at the International Criminal Court. They too should be allowed to claim that retrospective analysis of war crimes is a matter of the “quiet reflection of the soul,” not public, legal accountability. …..
Amnesia over Iraq has already set in. President Obama refused to countenance any prosecution for Bush era officials (and Bush himself) for the fabrications that Tutu alleges.
Prosecuting a former President (or his staff )would set a dangerous precedent for Obama when he himself left office, would it not?
Looking around for something of interest on Argentina, this morning, I came across this review of a book that documents the history of the anarchist movement of the turn from the 19th to 20th century, one that involved a widespread development of grass roots, direct democracy. The book is by Juan Suriano, Paradoxes of Utopia
When the Argentine economy collapsed in 2001, many were surprised by the factory takeovers and neighbourhood assemblies that resulted. But workers’ control and direct democracy have long histories in Argentina, where from the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, anarchism was the main revolutionary ideology of the labour movement and other social struggles.
…
For Juan Suriano, that’s just one part of the story. Paradoxes of Utopia gives us an engaging look at fin de siècle Buenos Aires that brings to life the vibrant culture behind one of the world’s largest anarchist movements challenging the myth that anarchist was merely a euro-centric movement: the radical schools, newspapers, theatres, and social clubs that made revolution a way of life. Cultural history in the best sense, Paradoxes of Utopia explores how a revolutionary ideology was woven into the ordinary lives of tens of thousands of people, creating a complex tapestry of symbols, rituals, and daily practices that supported-and indeed created the possibility of-the Argentine labour movement.
Suriano attributes the decline of the anarchism movement to a mixture of state repression and the rise of the welfare state, electoral democracy, and, what sounds like the acceptance of unions for negotiating for workers in the workplace:
However, by 1910 the Argentine anarchist movement in terms of numbers and influence was in steady decline mainly due to brutal state repression, but the growth of social welfare in housing, education and work, voting rights and institutionalisation of labour disputes all contributing with the author pointing out that ‘there is no doubt that the tendency toward self-marginalisation, combined with their reluctance to analyse or even note domestic particularities, dramatically facilitated their separation from the workers’.
There are lessons here, with Suiano concluding that there’s no easy route to building direct participant democracy, it’s a long hard process. I don’t know how such a movement can ensure they eventually don’t become victims of “brutal state repression”.
By ensuring that a workers movement has representation in every political party, as well as its own, and all parts of the social fabric of society.
Well that’s kind of what the “neoliberals” did for themselves over the last few decades. So it’s a big task to flush them out, and bring some sense and grass roots democracy back into every section of society.
In the judgement Justice Venning said he thought the court should be cautious about making judgements based on decisions made and conclusions drawn by a specialist body such as NIWA.
He said NIWA acted “within its own sphere of expertise”.
Justice Venning said unless the trust could point to some defect in NIWA’s decision-making process or show that the decision was clearly wrong in principle or in law the court could not intervene.
“This Court should not seek to determine or resolve scientific questions demanding the evaluation of contentious expert opinion.”
This release was jointly prepared by, and is endorsed by:
Associate Professor James Renwick, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Jim Salinger, currently visiting Stanford University
Professor Martin Manning, Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Peter Barrett, Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor (Emeritus) Blair Fitzharris, University of Otago
Professor Keith Hunter, Pro-Vice Chancellor Science, University of Otago
Spokesperson for the group, Associate Professor James Renwick of Victoria University said he was pleased that the court had respected and reaffirmed the credibility of the scientific process. It was a strong message to those wanting to challenge widely-agreed scientific findings to do so honestly and openly in scientific forums.
Barry Brill and, I suspect, the ACT party were behind this nonsense, Brill set up the trust fronting the action. I hope they get screwed with substantial costs.
Judgment said NIWA are entitled to costs, not only the court.
“The plaintiff does not succeed on any of its challenges to the three decisions of NIWA in issue. The application for judicial review is dismissed and judgment entered for the defendant. [and] The defendant is entitled to costs.”
They most assuredly were… lead by that obsessional nincompoop, John Boscawen. It was nothing but an ideologically motivated political ploy to try and embarrass the climate scientists and thus infer global warming to be a fake. They never had a show in hell of succeeding, but their own tunnel-visioned arrogance and self-deceit gave them the lie they would win.
I contributed to a small portion of the data involved, and the checks and balances in place were in strict accordance with WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) guidelines.
They were hoisted by their own ignorance. Ha ha ha ha!
In defending the claim, NIWA has spent a huge amount (estimated at well over $100,000) and has diverted a number of its scientists away from their research. The country can ill afford to waste such an amount. “This misguided action of a small group adds confusion to a simple issue – the world is warming and future generations of New Zealanders will have to deal with the consequences” Dr Renwick said.
I hope this story gets a bit of international exposure. It will help discredit these foolish but dangerous global warming deniers.
It doesn’t discourage them though , here are some of the culprits and their cheerleaders, busy spinning defeat into victory.
Warning: You will be entering an alternative reality
didja see mccully weaseling out of the marine reserve in the Ross Sea.
these guys will bend over backward for buck.
ooops…better be careful about what I say.
By the Elder Gods, wtf Australia? You couldn’t even get away with that level of outright, naked misogyny in the US Senate without committing political suicide. Oh and Larry Pickering is one colossal creep /shudder
btw, please put “trigger warning” on stuff like that, some out there haven’t had it easy on this sort of shit 🙁
Where you bin Nick. Good ole godzone led the way on this with the deliberate and well-funded Helenhate campaign of 05-08.
Among other write- and talk-back efforts of note, that nice Cam Slater (son of a National Party president and pushbike partner of the mallard) published pornographic material with Helen’s head attached and along with that nice David Farrar currently appearing on nice Jim Mora’s panel published every possible mysogenistic hatred-inciting comment imagineable including exhortations for her assassination.
Worked a treat. A true kiwi initiative. Our local mysogenistic hatemongering had comparatively limited effect, but: “bitch” never quite segued to the current aussie “witch”, perhaps because Helen had neither red hair, sharp nose, nor intelligence below that of 99% of the population.
Poor old Julia’s doomed. Latest victim of the massive 1950 – 70s US-funded Catholic anti-socialist propaganda efforts now brought to fruition and propogated by the Joyces, Englishes and anti-gay-voting Findlaysons of our day.
And black days too for poor old Jesus. Just as the last corrupt manipulators of His legacy enter their well-deserved hell, their hapless and brain-washed immigrant protegees rally to the hands that feed bread alone and keep the money-changers in the temple. To their own, ultimate, but fantasy-leavened detriment.
But He works in mysterious ways. If we had to give the world Helenhate as a prelude to UN Helen, Labourlite, the Mana Maori Party and GreenLab, perhaps that’s a small price.
Ah, too sleep deprived and not active on the NZ political blog scene until post-Labour 😛
My flatmate Tui actually sort of introduced me to this place I think, or at least the road that lead to it.
I remember some of that too, but it never really made into the mainstream media enough for me to notice it, where as the one is AUS has hit the mainstream at a rather horrifyingly broad level.
And was that a Farrar of Kiwiblog aka the sewer or the one on TV3 who has a massive bias against Labour and who “helped” Chris Carter end his political career?
And Julia’s initial problem was fucking Kevin Rudd’s inability to accept his well deserved fate. He stuffed up and the party made it clear it no longer had confidence in him as the leader. This opened up a hole for the media to exploit and created a fair few issues vis party in-fighting. Which, if it were less of an issue, might have given Gillard more support and allowed the party to fight back against the outright misogynistic bullshit the right has been throwing at her.
Oh, and some of us are atheists 😛
Also on ” intelligence below 99%…” Explain it please, because Gillard very much has a working brain and more apparent intelligence than Ruddkips.
So THIS is going on in this country, and apparently the majority of the population go along with this, thinking the persons affected are largely maligners and “bludgers”.
What a bloody disgrace this country has become, I’d say! Also there is NO solution for the capable to stay here and partake in a growing, successful economy.
As a migrant from a developed country, I ask why I ever bothered coming back to such a mean spirited, unfair, unsympathetic and bullshit country, selling itself as “clean green”, “humane”, “fair” and whatever, while in reality most are at each other’s throats.
The truth is, that is what happens in a depressed, impoverished, divided and manipulated society. That is what NZ has become. I hate it. Better bloody make sure it changes, or you will lose many more fair minded, educated, reasonable, well qualified and capable people, as you are doing every bloody week.
Key must be put out of office tomorrow, not in two years, MR USELESS SHEARER!
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters, PhD The 2020 global wildfire season brought extreme fire activity to the western U.S., Australia, the Arctic, and Brazil, making it the fifth most expensive year for wildfire losses on record. The year began with an unprecedented fire event ...
NOTE: This is an excerpt from a digital story – read the full story here.Tess TuxfordKo te Kauri Ko Au, Ko te Au ko Kauri I am the kauri, the kauri is me Te Roroa proverb In Waipoua Forest, at the top of the North Island, New ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Coming attraction: IPCC's upcoming major climate assessmentLook for more emphasis on 'solutions,' efforts by cities, climate equity ... and outlook for emissions cuts in ...
Ringing A Clear Historical Bell: The extraordinary images captured in and around the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 mirror some of the worst images of America's past.THERE IS A SCENE in the 1982 movie Missing which has remained with me for nearly 40 years. Directed by the Greek-French ...
To impact or not to impeach? I understand why some of those who are justifiably aghast at Trump’s behaviour over recent days might still counsel against impeaching him for a second time. To impeach him, they argue, would run the risk of making him a martyr in the eyes of ...
The Capitol Building, Washington DC, Wednesday, 6 January 2021. Oh come, my little one, come.The day is almost done.Be at my side, behold the sightOf evening on the land.The life, my love, is hardAnd heavy is my heart.How should I live if you should leaveAnd we should be apart?Come, let me ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 through Sat, Jan 9, 2021Editor's ChoiceAfter the Insurrection: Accountability, Reform, and the Science of Democracy The poisonous lies and enablers of sedition--including Senator Hawley, pictured ...
This article, guest authored by Prof. Angela Gallego-Sala & Dr. Julie Loisel, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Dec 21, 2020. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments. Peatlands Peatlands are ecosystems unlike any other. Perpetually saturated, their ...
The assault on the US Capitol and constitutional crisis that it has caused was telegraphed, predictable and yet unexpected and confusing. There are several subplots involved: whether the occupation of the Michigan State House in May was a trial run for the attacks on Congress; whether people involved in the ...
On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT ...
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Will the COVID-19 pandemic prompt a shift to healthier cities that focus on wellness rather than functional and economic concerns? This is a hypothesis that seems to be supported by several researchers around the world. In many ways, containment and physical distancing ...
Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was ...
Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato and Valmaine Toki, University of WaikatoAotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Globally, there are 1,121 ...
An event organised by the Auckland PhilippinesSolidarity group Have a three-course lunch at Nanam Eatery with us! Help support the organic farming of our Lumad communities through the Mindanao Community School Agricultural Foundation. Each ticket is $50. Food will be served on shared plates. To purchase, please email phsolidarity@gmail.com or ...
"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here." Prisons are places of unceasing emotional and physical violence, unrelieved despair and unforgivable human waste.IT WAS NATIONAL’S Bill English who accurately described New Zealand’s prisons as “fiscal and moral failures”. On the same subject, Labour’s Dr Martyn Findlay memorably suggested that no prison ...
This is a re-post from Inside Climate News by Ilana Cohen. Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. Whether or not people accept the science on Covid-19 and climate change, both global crises will have lasting impacts on health and ...
. . American Burlesque As I write this (Wednesday evening, 6 January), the US Presidential election is all but resolved, confirming Joe Biden as the next President of the (Dis-)United State of America. Trump’s turbulent political career has lasted just four years – one of the few single-term US presidents ...
The session started off so well. Annalax – suitably chastised – spent a pleasant morning with his new girlfriend (he would say paramour, of course, but for our purposes, girlfriend is easier*). He told her about Waking World Drow, and their worship of Her Ladyship. And he started ...
In a recent column I wrote for local newspapers, I ventured to suggest that Donald Trump – in addition to being a liar and a cheat, and sexist and racist – was a fascist in the making and would probably try, if he were to lose the election, to defy ...
When I was preparing for my School C English exam I knew I needed some quotes to splash through my essays. But remembering lines was never my strong point, so I tended to look for the low-hanging fruit. We’d studied Shakespeare’s King Lear that year and perhaps the lowest hanging ...
When I went to bed last night, I was expecting today to be eventful. A lot of pouting in Congress as last-ditch Trumpers staged bad-faith "objections" to a democratic election, maybe some rioting on the streets of Washington DC from angry Trump supporters. But I wasn't expecting anything like an ...
Melted ice of the past answers question today? Kate Ashley and a large crew of coauthors wind back the clock to look at Antarctic sea ice behavior in times gone by, in Mid-Holocene Antarctic sea-ice increase driven by marine ice sheet retreat. For armchair scientists following the Antarctic sea ice situation, something jumps out in ...
Christina SzalinskiWhen Martha Field became pregnant in 2005, a singular fear weighed on her mind. Not long before, as a Cornell University graduate student researching how genes and nutrients interact to cause disease, she had seen images of unborn mouse pups smaller than her pinkie nail, some with ...
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President respectively for the US 2020 Election, may have dispensed with the erstwhile nemesis, Trump the candidate – but there are numerous critical openings through which much, much worse many out there may yet see fit to ...
I don’t know Taupō well. Even though I stop off there from time to time, I’m always on the way to somewhere else. Usually Taupō means making a hot water puddle in the gritty sand followed by a swim in the lake, noticing with bemusement and resignation the traffic, the ...
Frances Williams, King’s College LondonFor most people, infection with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – leads to mild, short-term symptoms, acute respiratory illness, or possibly no symptoms at all. But some people have long-lasting symptoms after their infection – this has been dubbed “long COVID”. Scientists are ...
Last night, a British court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US. Unfortunately, its not because all he is "guilty" of is journalism, or because the offence the US wants to charge him with - espionage - is of an inherently political nature; instead the judge accepted ...
Is the Gender Identity Movement a movement for human liberation, or is it a regressive movement which undermines women’s liberation and promotes sexist stereotypes? Should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sport, use women-only spaces (public toilets, changing rooms, other facilities), be able to have access to everything ...
Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, University of BirminghamSpace exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth. The coming year is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here are some of ...
Michael Head, University of SouthamptonThe UK has become the first country to authorise the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for public use, with roll-out to start in the first week of 2021. This vaccine is the second to be authorised in the UK – following the Pfizer vaccine. The British government ...
So, Boris Johnson has been footering about in hospitals again. We should be grateful, perhaps, that on this occasion the Clown-in-Chief is only (probably) getting in the way and causing distractions, rather than taking up a bed, vital equipment and resources and adding more strain and danger to exhausted staff.Look at ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Many Scientists Now Say Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to ZeroThat’s one of several recent ...
The situation in the UK is looking catastrophic.Cases: over *70,000* people who were tested in England on 29th December tested positive. This is *not* because there were more tests on that day. It *is* 4 days after Christmas though, around when people who caught Covid on Christmas Day might start ...
by Don Franks For five days over New Year weekend, sixteen prisoners in the archaic pre WW1 block of Waikeria Prison defied authorities by setting fires and occupying the building’s roof. They eventually agreed to surrender after intervention from Maori party co-leader Rawiri Waititi. A message from the protesting men had stated: ...
Lost Opportunity: The powerful political metaphor of the Maori Party leading the despised and marginalised from danger to safety, is one Labour could have pre-empted by taking the uprising at Waikeria Prison much more seriously. AS WORD OF Rawiri Waititi’s successful intervention in the Waikeria Prison stand-off spreads, the Maori ...
Dear friends, it’s been a covidious year,A testing time for all of us here—Citizens of an island nationIn a state of managed isolation,A team (someone said) five million strong,Making it up as we went along:Somehow in typical Kiwi fashion,Without any wild excess ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Dec 27, 2020 through Sat, Jan 2, 2021Editor's Choice7 Graphics That Show Why the Arctic Is in Trouble Arctic Sea Ice: NSIDC It’s no secret that the Arctic is ...
One of the books I read in 2020 was She, by H. Rider Haggard (1887). I thoroughly enjoyed it, as being an exemplar of a good old-fashioned adventure story. I also noted with amusement ...
Scottish doctor Malcolm Kendrick looks at the pandemic and the responses to it 30th December 2020 I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of ...
I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or the numbers seem very low please check this out. After correcting send me the URL for your ...
The deed is done, the doers undoneHad I been a Brit, I would have voted ‘Remain’ rather than Brexit (or ‘Leave’). Instead, I have been bemused by the comic theatre of British politics, fascinated by what the Brits actual think and professionally interested by the revelations of the complexity of ...
As we welcome in the new year, our focus is on continuing to keep New Zealanders safe and moving forward with our economic recovery. There’s a lot to get on with, but before we say a final goodbye to 2020, here’s a quick look back at some of the milestones ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Babies born with tongue-tie will be assessed and treated consistently under new guidelines released by the Ministry of Health, Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Around 5% to 10% of babies are born with a tongue-tie, or ankyloglossia, in New Zealand each year. At least half can ...
The prisoner disorder event at Waikeria Prison is over, with all remaining prisoners now safely and securely detained, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says. The majority of those involved in the event are members of the Mongols and Comancheros. Five of the men are deportees from Australia, with three subject to ...
Travellers from the United Kingdom or the United States bound for New Zealand will be required to get a negative test result for COVID-19 before departing, and work is underway to extend the requirement to other long haul flights to New Zealand, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed today. “The new PCR test requirement, foreshadowed last ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has added her warm congratulations to the New Zealanders recognised for their contributions to their communities and the country in the New Year 2021 Honours List. “The past year has been one that few of us could have imagined. In spite of all the things that ...
Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment David Parker has congratulated two retired judges who have had their contributions to the country and their communities recognised in the New Year 2021 Honours list. The Hon Tony Randerson QC has been appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the New Year’s Honours List 2021 highlights again the outstanding contribution made by Pacific people across Aotearoa. “We are acknowledging the work of 13 Pacific leaders in the New Year’s Honours, representing a number of sectors including health, education, community, sports, the ...
The Government’s investment in digital literacy training for seniors has led to more than 250 people participating so far, helping them stay connected. “COVID-19 has meant older New Zealanders are showing more interest in learning how to use technology like Zoom and Skype so they can to keep in touch ...
New virus variants and ongoing high rates of diseases in some countries prompt additional border protections Extra (day zero or day one) test to be in place this week New ways of reducing risk before people embark on travel being investigated, including pre-departure testing for people leaving the United Kingdom ...
Pacific Media Watch correspondent The pro-independence conflict in West Papua with a missionary plane reportedly being shot down at Intan Jaya has stirred contrasting responses from the TNI/POLRI state sources, church leaders and an independence leader. A shooting caused a plane to catch fire on 6 January 2021 in the ...
“Last year ACT warned that rewarding protestors at Ihumātao with taxpayer money would promote further squatting. We just didn’t think it would happen as quickly as it is in Shelly Bay” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “The prosperity of all ...
Our kindly PM registered her return to work as leader of the nation with yet another statement on the Beehive website, the second in two days (following her appointment of Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council on Wednesday). It’s great to know we don’t have to check with ...
A Pūhoi pub is refusing to remove a piece of memorabilia bearing the n-word from its walls. Dr Lachy Paterson looks at the history of the word here, and New Zealand’s complicity in Britain’s shameful slave trading past.Content warning: This article contains racist language and images.On a pub wall in ...
Supermarket shoppers looking for citrus are seeing a sour trend at the moment – some stores are entirely tapped out of lemons. But why? Batches of homemade lemonade will be taking a hit this summer, with life not giving New Zealand shoppers lemons. Prices are high at supermarkets and grocers that ...
You’re born either a cheery soul or a gloomy one, reckons Linda Burgess – but what happens when gene pools from opposite ends of the spectrum collide?In our shoeboxes of photos that we have to sort out before we die or get demented – because who IS that kid on ...
Summer reissue: Prisoner voting rights are something that few in government seem particularly motivated to do anything about. Could a catchy charity single help draw attention to the issue?First published September 1, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its ...
Hundreds more Cook Islanders are expected to begin criss-crossing the Pacific, Air NZ will triple the number of flights to Rarotonga next week, and about 300 managed isolation places will be freed up for Kiwis returning from other parts of the world. When Thomas Tarurongo Wynne took a job in Wellington at ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Ena Manuireva in Auckland It seems a long time ago – some 124 days – since Mā’ohi Nui deplored its first covid-19 related deaths of an elderly woman on 11 September 2020 followed by her husband just hours later, both over the age of 80. The local ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Turnbull, Postdoctoral research associate, UNSW A global coalition of more than 50 countries have this week pledged to protect over 30% of the planet’s lands and seas by the end of this decade. Their reasoning is clear: we need greater protection ...
The Reserve Bank Governor’s apology and claim he will ‘own the issue’ is laughable given the lack of answers and timing of its release. Jordan Williams, a spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Union said: “It’s been five days since they came clean, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Kokshagina, Researcher – Innovation & Entrepreneurship, RMIT University Are too many online meetings and notifications getting you down? Online communication tools – from email to virtual chat and video-conferencing – have transformed the way we work. In many respects they’ve made ...
The Reserve Bank acknowledges information about some of its stakeholders may have been breached in a malicious data hack. The Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has commissioned an independent inquiry into how stakeholders' information was compromised when hackers breached a file sharing service used by the bank. “We ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland This story contains spoilers for Ammonite Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of Jurassic fossils from Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset Coast from the age of ten in 1809. ...
A tribute to the sitcoms of old? In the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yup. Sam Brooks reviews the audacious WandaVision.Nothing sends a chill up my spine like the phrase “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Since launching in 2008 with Iron Man, the MCU has become a shambling behemoth, with over 23 films (not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University The alt-right, QAnon, paramilitary and Donald Trump-supporting mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6 claimed they were only doing what the so-called “founding fathers” of the US had done in ...
The Point of Order Ministerial Workload Watchdog and our ever-vigilant Trough Monitor were both triggered yesterday by an item of news from the office of Conservation Minister Kititapu Allan. The minister was drawing attention to new opportunities to dip into the Jobs for Nature programme (and her statement was the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Kupz, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University In July 1921, a French infant became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), after the mother had died from the disease. The vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is ...
The first Friday Poem for 2021 is by Wellington poet Rebecca Hawkes.While you were partying I studied the bladeI your ever-loving edgelord God-emperorof the bot army & bitcoin mine subsistingon an IV drip of gamer girl bathwaterfinally my lonelinessis your responsibility………. you seeI need a girlfriend assigned to me by the ...
The arming of police officers in Canterbury was inevitable with the growing numbers and brazenness of the gangs across the country – this should be a permanent step, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is unfortunate that we have come to the point ...
Celebrations in Aotearoa New Zealand to mark the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will begin on Thursday 21 January with ICAN Aotearoa New Zealand’s Wellington and online event, and continue on Friday ...
Hardly anyone is using their Covid Tracer app. Something needs to change.As the mercury approaches 30°C in Aotearoa, there is a good deal of slipping and slopping, but, let’s face it, piss-all scanning. As few as around 500,000 QR codes are being scanned by users of the NZ Covid Tracer ...
On the East Coast, a group of Māori-owned enterprises is innovating to create new revenue streams while doing what they love.New Zealand’s remote and sparsely populated regions are typically not the best places to create thriving brick-and-mortar businesses. In small communities miles away from any major centres, there are so ...
As we reach the height of summer, it’s not too late to do a safety check on your gas bottle. The Environmental Protection Authority’s Safer Homes programme has some tips and tricks to keep in mind before you fire up the grill. "If you’ve ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37)If you’re in any way unsure about ...
“We may as well knock on the gang headquarters around this country and tell them we all give up," says Darroch Ball co-leader of Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is simply outrageous that violent offender, James Tuwhangai, has been released from ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Ireland, Israel, and Lebanon. Chart by Keith Rankin. The countries with the most recent large outbreaks of Covid19 are those with large numbers of recent recorded cases, but yet to record the deaths that most likely will result. In this camp, this time, are Ireland, Israel ...
RuPaul is in Aotearoa, kicking back in managed isolation to await the filming of an Australasian version of her hugely popular reality show Drag Race. But not everyone is happy about, explains Eli Matthewson. The world’s most famous drag queen, RuPaul, is in New Zealand, the government confirmed earlier this week ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong What can we make of Clive Palmer? This week, he announced his United Australia Party (UAP) would not contest the upcoming West Australian state election on March 13. After a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gisela Kaplan, Emeritus Professor in Animal Behaviour, University of New England Have you ever seenmagpies play-fighting with one another, or rolling around in high spirits? Or an apostlebird running at full speed with a stick in its beak, chased by a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Jackson, Program Director, Centre for Policy Development, and Associate Professor of Education, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University Childcare centres across Australia are suffering staff shortages, which have been exacerbated by the COVID crisis. Many childcare workers across Australia left when parents started ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Barrett, Senior Lecturer in Taxation, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Rhetoric plays an important role in tax debate and therefore tax policy. If your side manages to gain traction in the public imagination with labels such as “death ...
*This article was first published on The Conversation and is republished with permission* Whoever leads the Republican Party post-Trump will need to consider how they will maintain the rabid support of his “base”, while working to regain more moderate voters who defected from the party in the 2020 election. In a historic ...
Covid-19 fears accelerated banks’ moves towards cashless transactions. But the Reserve Bank is fighting to protect cash, and those who still use it. ...
Good morning and welcome to this one-off edition of The Bulletin, covering major stories from the last few weeks.A quick preamble to this: Today’s special edition of The Bulletin is all about filling you in on some of the stories you might have missed over the summer period. Perhaps you had ...
Summer reissue: In this episode of Bad News, Alice Snedden is forced to confront her own mortality before hosting a very special dinner party to get to grips with the euthanasia debate.First published August 27, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is ...
The contrast between the words of John F Kennedy and today’s anti-democratic demagogue is inescapable, writes Dolores Janiewski I still remember three eloquent speeches by an American president. One happened in January 1961 and spoke about a “torch being passed to a new generation”. Two years later and one day apart, ...
The debate over cutting down a large macrocarpa to make way for a new residential development has highlighted a wider agreement between developers and protesters: that we also need to be planting far more trees. At the corner of Great North Road and Ash Street in Avondale, a 150-year-old macrocarpa stands its ground ...
More infectious variants of Covid-19 are increasingly being intercepted at the country’s borders, but the minister running New Zealand’s response is resisting pressure to accelerate vaccination plans despite demands from health experts as well as political friends and foes, Justin Giovannetti reports.New Zealand’s first Covid-19 jabs will be administered in ...
As CEO of her iwi rūnanga, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was on the frontline protecting her community during the first outbreak of Covid-19. Now that more virulent strains threaten to breach our borders, the Māori Party co-leader calls on the government to introduce much stricter measures.As we enter the New Year I ...
The Prada Cup challenger series starts today. Suzanne McFadden goes behind the scenes of the world's only live yachting regatta to see what's in store for the next five weeks. At 6am on race days, Iain Murray wakes up and immediately checks the weather outside his Auckland window. “It’s all ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raquel Peel, Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland This story contains spoilers for Bridgerton The first season of Bridgerton, Netflix’s new hit show based on Julia Quinn’s novels, premiered on December 25 last year. The show is set in London, during the ...
The New Zealand government believes its own negotiations with Rio Tinto will be resolved "fairly quickly" now there is certainty about the future of the Tiwai Point smelter. ...
Amanda Thompson and her family are attempting to cut back on the meat, so they gave all the vego sausies the local supermarket had to offer a hoon on the barbie. Here are the results.I was a vegetarian once. Even the best of us take a well-meaning wrong turn on ...
The Taxpayers’ Union welcomes the call by Wellington City Councillor Fleur Fitzsimons for a shift to land value based rates charges. Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, "Local government leaders across the country should join in Fitzsimons’s call ...
It’s been described as ‘pointless revenge’, but impeaching the president has a firm moral purpose, argues Michael Blake – setting a limit to what sorts of action a society will accept.A House majority, including 10 Republicans, voted today to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection”. The vote will initiate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bryan Cranston, Lead Academic Teacher – Politics & Social Science (Swinburne Online), Swinburne University of Technology In a historic vote today, Donald Trump became the only US president to be impeached twice. By a margin of 232–197, the Democrat-controlled US House of ...
Hurrah. The PM is back to posting her announcements on the government’s official website, her deputy is back in the business of self-congratulation, Rio Tinto is back in the business of sucking up cheap electricity to produce aluminium at Tiwai Point, near Bluff. And overseas students (some, anyway) can come ...
The electricity sector, Government and people of Southland are rejoicing after Tiwai Point aluminium smelter owner Rio Tinto announced the major industrial would be open until the end of 2024, Marc Daalder reports Stakeholders in the electricity sector and across Southland are celebrating the extension of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter's ...
If you’ve been on social media this week, you may well have come across a surge in interest in sea shanties. We asked a veteran of the style why. In case you missed it, soon may the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum. If that sentence is even ...
“It is basic human decency to speak up and protect any vulnerable child from harm, so withholding information in child abuse cases and allowing the abuse to happen by not speaking up is, put simply, a cowardly move,” says Jess McVicar Co-Leader ...
Allowing 1,000 returning international students back to New Zealand is the right move by the Government, and hopefully we will be able to welcome more, says ExportNZ Executive Director Catherine Beard. "International education has contributed ...
A majority of the House of Representatives have voted to make Donald Trump the first US president ever to be impeached twice, formally charging him in his waning days in power with inciting an insurrection just a week after a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol. Follow the ...
The Youth of NZ will be standing up for climate action once again on January 26th outside of Parliament for School Strike 4 Climate NZ’s 100 Days 4 Action campaign rally. “We believe it is vital to hold our new Labour-led government to account ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is calling on Rotorua Lakes District Council to urgently release the engineering report on the public safety and structural integrity of the visible foundation-misalignment and lean of the City’s Hemo Gorge monument to government ...
Changes in income and movement in and out of poverty over time are only weakly associated with higher rates of child hospitalisation in New Zealand, according to a new University of Auckland study. Published today in PLOS ONE, the collaborative study led by Dr ...
With a long, hot summer upon us, pet owners are urged to be extra mindful of their pet’s health and safety. Unusually warm weather can quickly take its toll on furry family members, who aren’t well equipped for dealing with blazing heat. The National ...
The Council for Civil Liberties is challenging a claim by former National Party leader Simon Bridges that people should have total freedom of expression on Twitter. ...
A century of sexual abuse of women in New Zealand is analysed in a University of Auckland study. The newly-published research looks back as far as 1922 by analysing interviews with thousands of women about their lifetime experiences. The study indicates ...
62,686 more native trees will be planted in New Zealand in 2021 thanks to generous Kiwis who chose to go green for Christmas gifting. <img src="https://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/2101/cf409712f141732a8543.jpeg" width="720" height="540"> Trees That Count, a programme ...
Source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs – Analysis-Reportage By Arturo López-LevyOakland, CaliforniaUnfortunately, the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, encouraged by the Inciter-in-Chief, will not be the last act of mischief. Trump is insisting on causing as much damage as possible to the interests and values ...
The threatened Tiwai Point aluminium smelter will keep operating through to the end of December 2024, in a new deal just announced to the New Zealand stock exchange. Mining conglomerate Rio Tinto announced last year it was closing Tiwai due to high energy and transmission costs. Meridian Energy said that ...
The lack of Māori language or symbolism on the SuperGold Card isn’t just a design issue – it’s emblematic of the overwhelming whiteness of Aotearoa’s superannuant population, writes former race relations commissioner Joris de Bres.I’ve enjoyed the SuperGold Card since I retired eight years ago. I appreciate the free public ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Brumm, Professor, Griffith University The dating of an exceptionally old cave painting of animals that was found recently on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is reported in our paper out today. The painting portrays images of the Sulawesi warty pig (Sus ...
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Well that was a pain.
Hardware failures at the main server when it got it’s 3 monthly reboot. Problem with a hard disk failure and the RAID not quite working as expected so it didn’t drop the affected disk neatly. And there was a problem anyway with the remote access to the BIOS to change the array. Not to mention that the browsers are getting VERY paranoid about running Java applications.
I’d already managed to destroy (damnit!) the warm backup system (one of my home systems) with an ill-timed screwup a few days ago. Played with QFlash after setting everything up for the new IP address that I got after we moved. It seemed to trash a pile of files on the boot partition. I was actually working on repackaging it…
So I pushed the backups of data, images and code to the cold server, and went to bed at 0300.
I do have to work as well and time is tight. So decided this morning that I would let the hosting techs deal with the hardware in the morning. If everything turned to custard on the drives, I would head home early to kick the cold server into action. It is a pretty small virtual server so capacity wise, I’d have to watch it – something I am loath to do at work.
So I spent this morning and part of the afternoon silently remotely monitoring an increasingly frustrated tech working his way through the process of finding what in the hell was wrong. I could watch him working his way through the bios and booted tools. Nice toolset (I want…)
Pain being out for just over 12 hours. But we’re volunteers and usually short of time and cash. I’d love to have a dedicated warm backup server – but the budget doesn’t stretch that far at present.
Ummm need some more sleep. The coding is a bit sluggish right now.
Thanks lprent.
pain is generally a positive protective mechanism warning of hazards
Thanks and where can we make contributions ?
Always willing to take people’s money… Donate here, these days the direct to the bank account is the best…
Good idea TC.
I will make a donation and I suggest everyone else does the same.
Just think. In the past we paid Wilson and Horton to feed us with tory propaganda. Why not pay the standard to feed us real news and community interaction?
You mean if we donate they will change and start providing us ‘Real news’, where do I sign up? Would be a refreshing change, although I am thouroughly entertained with the current red tinted view of the world.
Oh Bob, so sure of your world view, so unwilling to actually say what it is.
We don’t provide “news”. Mostly we provide “opinion” with a few facts interspersed and people commenting do the same. Of course the former is pretty much a job description of a journalist. They just have to get used to the blowback (the latter).
Many of them seem to have a problem with that. Personally I think that it will do them quite a lot of good.
But you have yet to tell us what you think – currently you perform the role of useless carping critic with not notable skills. This is merely my opinion, but I suspect it is because you are somewhat too stupid to think.. But is does provide us with a lower benchmark to measure ourselves against. (my nana always told me to look for what people were good at…)
…backup server – but the budget doesn’t stretch that far at present…
How much? Maybe we could have a whip round.
They aren’t a one off cost like buying a machine. It is actually the bandwidth that costs the most over time directly and indirectly.
These days we have a dedicated server running in NZ that costs about ~$333 per month ($290+GST). Traffic is unlimited inside NZ as (a major part) of the server cost, but costs $2/GB for offshore above our limit of 25GB. We typically do somewhere between 180GB and 300GB per month in local traffic (subject to cloudflare)…
We’d typically do between 50 and 150GB in overseas traffic if it is left unconstrained – mostly to spambots, searchbots, and RSS feeds. That is where we get pinged pretty badly. It is all the more annoying because more than 95% of the human clients are inside the NZ net.
So we now have cloudflare ($US 20 per month) which caches the static parts of the site like images and pushes almost all of the traffic local and overseas back on to the Southern Cross cable that the 25GB limit is meant to ration usage of. It also slows the site compared to being on the local net. But it makes our bills a lot more manageable. We effectively feed cloudflare mostly text (because they cache the rest) and they feed that and the cached images to everyone else from multiple servers worldwide.
I also have my home system that these days could handle the traffic load for a few days with cloudflare assisting. Probably more so once the fibre arrives near the door in December. But residential bandwidth is pretty expensive. I usually run that ‘warm’ with a copy running in near real time to the main server with a replicated database and rsynced directory.
And there is a cheap virtual server that sits cold and can be upgraded easily. I mostly use it for out of NZ storage of backups. But has probably been too problematic to run for a number of years as an active server because of CPU usage. The caching from cloudflare may change that and the reason to site in NZ (speed to NZ users) is now moot as we have to run everything from offshore because of the costs of overseas traffic…
We actually make enough from the advertising. However it is somewhat unpredictable when the money arrives. So we concentrate on keeping the costs down.
So a backup server would involve a monthly outlay for bandwidth?
Another $333-odd per month? Ouch!
What happened to the previously user-friendly donate page? I don’t have a smart-phone so can’t use an app.
It’s a wee bit of a disincentive, those without the relevant tech or telebanking having to traipse down to the bank. However will make the effort…
I haven’t looked at paypal for years. I see what you mean. I think I might remove it from the donations page.
But I usually pay things using internet banking these days. That is pretty easy. One call to the bank should be able to set it up.
Thanks for getting it going again, Lynn.
I amused myself writing up a couple of posts offline this morning before I went out. Will post one below.
Welcome back The Standard. Thanks for getting her going again Lprent.
The good news is that one Pagani is gone from Labour. It’s far too early to feel anything like optimism about the largest opposition party thus far, but it is good news none the less.
It seems fitting that he’s gone to represent mining interests. Not as fitting as going on a benefit would have been, but of course years of making contacts amongst the rich and powerful go a long way even amongst the ignorant and inept.
ps, my computer kept up a facsimilie of the site from after I turned the computer off last night. Something called cloud fare. Frankly I won’t be surprised if one day the computer starts turning on the kettle of its own accord before I get up in the morning, such are the marvels of technololgy…
Labour insider moves to NZOG
Surprised the he was once part of New Labour though.
[lprent: fixed the link. ]
Oil & Gas
How appropriate.
Like you huh, full of piss and wind and vinegar but not much else.
Well, 25 odd years ago he was much younger and maybe more radical in his thinking. I did the opposite… started out quite conservative and went further to the Left the older I became.
Ditto…
Well, I meant that he’s unctuous and flatulent.
Same here. Impending environmental doom really focusses the mind.
One down……….
@ David H
lol
Aye tis good news. Now hopefully the leader can be given speeches that sound like they were written for the leader of the Labour Party and not for some pale blue tosh.
The Labour Leader as a speech reader. Reads whatever is put in front of him. So inspiring.
SP thats how you get a golden parachute
He’s FUCKING GONE! 😀
This plus Bill Clinton’s DNC speech has made my day after some bloody horrible stuff (trigger warning, sexual harassment, 1, 2 )
This is about journalism. One of the blogs I read is this one:
http://ideologicallyimpure.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/the-thin-end-of-the-wedge-art-edition/#comments
The above links to a story about The Dowse Gallery being challenged over restrictions to its patrons. I entirely agree with the opinion of the blogger. After watching the 3news video linked to in the piece, I have a question.
On the subject of social privileges, do you think a journalist who watches a restricted artwork and reports its contents to everyone, disrespects the wishes of the artist and participants?
In a world where many fail to recognise the existence of social privileges, I might appear to be looking a little too closely, but it seems that 3News have an opportunity to learn from this too, not just Paul Young and friends. If you are a journalist, you have power to communicate far outside the ability of average people. If someone sees the video and tells their friends what was in it, that is acceptable and the artist would expect it. But if you do it purposely on national TV because you can, for money, for reputation, because it’s the “outrage story” of the moment, then you’ve crossed the line. Especially if one of the defining features of the work has a religious element.
You could say, ah yes but critical reviews are normal, journalists report, what’s the problem?
Normal to who? Are they normal to Muslims? Far as I know, they are not. Isn’t this all about the right way to cross lines? Muslims that challenge Islamic thought must follow strict processes and none of them are anything like the freedoms of journalistic privilege in a western world. If the artist has an agreement with the gallery to uphold certain cultural ideas, then a journalist who wanders in and is allowed to circumvent those agreements hasn’t checked their privilege or extended any courtesies. The gallery could also be at fault here, by simply forgetting about dominant culture, but there is no proof for behind the scenes events.
Yes but artists get criticised, their work is reviewed, it’s normal, how can you say it would be unacceptable, you’re a crazy PC femnobot!
The artist drew explicit lines before the work was offered for viewing. The gallery accepted those terms, potential patrons knew the terms. Anyone who knew the terms and broke them committed a violence. Ill-gotten gains, receiving stolen goods, legal entrapment, blackmail, are all generally viewed as unacceptable in mainstream white culture. In order to maintain the moral high ground, we have to be sure we don’t commit any immoral acts along the way, ourselves.
In this case, did the journalist misuse the privilege of being allowed to see the video by then clambering over the artist’s work with their own culture (the self importance of “being the first to view”) and privilege (the ability to address thousands or millions with a review), setting up a situation where the description wrongly tore away some of the privacy necessary for the installation to retain its natural integrity?
Has the work now been compromised by that rough description, not because of the description per see, but the way the review was undertaken?
For example, the journalist could have chosen to re-iterate the description given by the artist or gallery, or simply smiled and said, “Well I guess you blokes will never know. But it’s good.” instead of a pop culture analogy. Is there now the suggestion that the work has been judged by mainstream popular white culture as “nothing to get worked up about”? Cheapened by comparing religion, art and Islamic culture to an afternoon with the Kardashians? To be able to make such an analogy could suggest that any subtle messages in the artwork went totally over the viewer’s head, but that doesn’t mean the work hasn’t been labelled to invite prejudice.
And if the artwork is “nothing to get worked up about”, does that help to muddle and sideline the central issue of privilege, allowing uninformed people to think this is just a case of PC Gone Mad? Does it make the job of attacking the artwork, artist, Muslims, women, minorities, human rights and the gallery, easier? Did the journalist commit a form of cultural violence/undermining brought about by unexamined privilege?
NB: The journalist was a woman, naturally, otherwise she couldn’t have seen the video. I do not in any way suggest that because a journalist, who is a woman, may have done something wrong, that now every man and his dog is justified in doing as they please and that all issues of privilege are now void. These questions are to examine journalistic ethics (that will no doubt make some people laugh), identifying privilege and using privilege constructively.
been there while TS down, may not be my cup of tea
whole lotta questions to be subsumed above
hope you got the Very Excellent for *natural history* item
Early Mousterian man-50,000-100,000 ya
currently we share probably 96% material with our hirsute companions
yet
35M single-nucleotide changes represent about 1% of genome
yet
the proteins directly coded by genes are highly conserved (29% identical, rest differ maybe two aminos on average)
Then, there is those pesky ancient repetitive elements (Are’s)
check out mice
i am not paying to read the herald online, passed over enough money to feel unwell
On the subject of social privileges, do you think a journalist who watches a restricted artwork and reports its contents to everyone, disrespects the wishes of the artist and participants?
I was a little uncomfortable with this, but I don’t think it really breached the spirit of the request that only women view the exhibit. Plenty of articles had already said “they’re getting ready for a wedding, putting on makeup, etc” – the fact is that only the journalist saw the women unveiled, she didn’t name them or publish images of them.
Someone with more knowledge of the culture would be able to say if they think it’s disrespectful or breaching the spirit of the women’s privacy.
Authoritarian arses.
http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/environment-canterbury-commissioners-stay
http://www.dia.govt.nz/Resource-material-Our-Policy-Advice-Areas-Environment-Canterbury
Yeah, I/S has a good write-up about that over on No Right Turn. Can’t say that I’m surprised – it’s what you get from a bunch of dictators upset that democracy is taking their wealth streams from them.
Grrrrrrrr.
And of course the rural National supporters wont give a toss, despite the irony over their ETS whinging etc.
science IS Wonderful imo Joe.:)
more soon
Farmers, big business and big iwi want all the water to themselves and as far as they are concerned, domestic and recerational users can get stuffed.
And here’s Bill Clinton’s DNC speech:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/40869_Video-_President_Bill_Clintons_Remarks_at_the_2012_Democratic_National_Convention
Same old Democrat centre right economic policy, leavened with delicious cluebatting of the Tea Bag Party’s abysmal failures to understand economics101 and why co-operation has empirically better outcome than teh GOP’s current “everyone for themselves!” meme. Plus the usual highlighting of why civil rights matter in terms of preventing people being part of society and how various aspects of poverty have very negative outcomes for the USA. With a big freaking dose of “I do give a fuck about these issues” and humour.
And amusingly the GOP response has been mostly silence with the Tea Baggers going all a twit’ with ZOMG: “DEMOCRATS BOOED GOD!”.
Has Obama fucked up? Yeap, a lot of the Republican’s are lost cases and should have never had any positions of responsibility in the Obama Administration concerning anything to do with science. Then there’s the continued use of Bush era laws to hide government actions and allow violations of civil rights both in and outside of the USA, slow movement at the federal level on LGBT rights plus the bailout. On the other hand though, the GOP has lost it’s brains completely and utterly, so a Mitt Romney presidency + Paul the Granny Starver Ryan etc is pure doom…
Not too sure why everyone thinks the sun shines out of WJC’s ass.
The economic boom during his presidency was more apparent than real, largely created by housing booms and the the expansion of credit, with a hell of a lot of people being left behind. His welfare reforms hit the poor extremely hard leading to hardship, creating a new underclass and the jobs kept streaming offshore.
I dont rate him at all really. He is no Roosevelt (the all time best), Kennedy or even a Johnson.
Just a thought, pagani may cause an explosion when he tries to turn oil and gas into water 🙂
Wow! wotta day. be wary that habits do not form u. (no standard to continue on reading)
ya know, it is just one freakin thing after another with NZ
most here are literary, have a gander at the first paragraph of Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….Light…..Darkness…..we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..”
i regularly meet and encounter many middle-aged adult New Zealanders who do not have literacy above early intermediate level, of all ethnicities
I love watching Rachel Smalley on channel 3; i suspect she has a compassionate heart and leanings in our direction, but that is only speculation, and we all know what that’s about, know do we not?
Putin was wonderful to watch on RT today, particularly when compared and contrasted with print articles regarding his veiws today also
i check out NEWS NOW online occasionally, that covers the zeitgeist; today highlighted the U.S-Israel “spat” (clever journalism) over Iran, ya get corroborating perspectives, ya get the drift,
anyway, Putin highlighted the present Russia-China relationship, characterised by him as “at an unprecedented high….of mutual trust…developed over 1000’s of years
meanwhile the signal being sent by Singapore at the Communist Party School lectures is that there be equivalent relationships with u.s and China (they continue to benefit)
likely successor to the Party is at school there i believe. Yup
Putin-“drugs from Afganistan increase 60% in the last year, wtf? are there not a lot of international military types there? and it is continuing to flood Europe.wow! revenge is a dish best served up Cold
these freakin fasci…was one myself once…that is wot ‘appens when you wanna be your own god,
oi oi oi
well, bound because individually they are weak and fragile, been there had the patches, weirdos
Act 1: 18, (With that reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out…)
yes it is the NIV, so every one who is able and chooses to can read the freakin thing, priest…
28, You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.
I met some Beautiful maori people at a small fellowship last night
formerly they were down, and out
Now, Beautiful People, as they were to be
Maori People are Beautiful People with challenging Big Hearts
ol Martin Luther aye? some Dread
Day-Hebrew-‘Yom’ is used in different senses in the Genesis story
ex-nihilo-from nothing-go there
remember proximate cause and Ultimate cause (Aristotle)
‘pretty’ Lamarckian
then there is Ichneumonidae-Darwin could not really understand those but we can, can we not
do you know, some dinosaurs had rheumatic joints (in the fossil record)
There is at least 12 to follow around these here parts (purty Lamarckian)
joe, CV, D, Board, Dr, Murray, Olwyn, Carol, Rosie, Iprent, QoT(if your cup of tea, important work) and U-Turn, so follow McFlock to Sanctuary
Pr 1:17- How useless to spread a net in full view of the birds! These men (gender neutral nowadays)
lie in wait for their own blood;
OR,
Acts 2: 44-
I was at the airport the other day, and happened to see Jerry waddling towards me, I said “Jerry Brownlee”, he looked at me, and as I had his attention I said “You fat fuck” … he said “Thank you” about 10 – 20 people were in hearing distance, I wish every politician would was shown that much respect each time they went out in public, then maybe their egos wouldn’t be so big.?
Listening to yet more reports on the US Democrat convention, I was thinking about how so much of our news comes from the US (as well as the UK). But even strong lefties spend a lot of time discussing US political issues. Undoubtedly, its imperialistic power mean that it has a big influence on our lives. But, I decided I’d like to hear more from other countries we might learn from, such as Scandinavian and South American countries.
First I did a search on news from Finland. I did notice that it’s economy is experiencing some contraction right now. However, I also found this interesting op ed on Finland’s education system (albeit in a US newspaper), and why it is so successful.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/a-new-finnish-lesson-why-gender-equality-matters-in-school-reform/2012/09/05/3703ad4c-f778-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_blog.html
The author, Pasi Sahlberg, is director general of Finland’s Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation. He has served the Finnish government in various positions, worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. and for the European Training Foundation in Italy as senior education specialist.
Sahlberg describes Finland as a very competitive ‘market economy’ (a negative I’d have thought), but also says that,
He identifies 3 main provisions that ensure all Finnish children get a good education. But he also identifies an underlying reason why those provisions have been made: the relative gender equality, with significant numbers of women in top positions in central government, public life and commerce. He quotes Education historian Diane Ravitch, who criticises the corporatisation of US schools, reforming the schools along the lines of business practices, as being carried out by the “Billionaire Boys’ Club.”
The 3 fundamental provisions he identifies are:
1)
2)
3)
Sahlberg says that,
I am having trouble putting in a proposal to the MMP Review on their web site on this the last day. The 7th September is stated but not a finishing time that I could see and there does not seems to be any box to enter a proposal on line – as if that has been withdrawn although it is before 5.30 pm and I think it should be open to midnight.
Also it is strange that a late proposal is dated 5.59 pm when the time is still about 5.30 pm.
The one before is 5.58pm. It’s almost as if times are being allocated rather than recorded.
SEPTEMBER 06, 2012
Why Desmond Tutu is Right About Bush & Blair
Inside the CIA Dossier on Iraq
by VIJAY PRASHAD
Last week, Bishop Desmond Tutu was to sit beside former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at the cringingly named Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. Tutu, one of the main moral voices in the anti-Apartheid struggle, decided to withdraw. He could not stand to sit next to Blair, or to Tony’s mate, George W. Bush because they had “fabricated the grounds [for war on Iraq] to behave like playground bullies.” Stingingly, in The Observer (September 1), Tutu recounted how he had called the White House a few days before the 2003 invasion, spoke to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and asked her to give the UN weapons inspectors more time to do their work. But “Ms. Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.” The US and UK went to war, and according to Tutu, “More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.”
Amnesia over Iraq has already set in. President Obama refused to countenance any prosecution for Bush era officials (and Bush himself) for the fabrications that Tutu alleges. In the UK, the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq War has finished its deliberations, but Sir John Chilcot has delayed the release of the final report for a full year because of wrangling to prevent Blair’s private letters to Bush from being revealed (he perhaps does not want to allow validation that in a July 2002 note he wrote, “You know, George, whatever you decide to do, I’m with you). At his appearances at the Inquiry, Blair admitted that the Iraqis were continuing to allow weapons inspectors, and that, as Sir Lawrence Freedman suggested, they had “started to reap dividends.” However, Blair worried that Saddam was “back to his old games” and was not capable of a “change of heart.” In his paper-thin memoirs, A Journey, Blair notes the question of regret for the war should not be a public question, but it can only be asked and answered “in the quiet reflection of the soul.”
If this were a universal standard, then Syria’s Bashar Assad can relax, and so should all those who are threatened with arrest and trial at the International Criminal Court. They too should be allowed to claim that retrospective analysis of war crimes is a matter of the “quiet reflection of the soul,” not public, legal accountability. …..
Read more…..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/06/inside-the-cia-dossier-on-iraq/
Prosecuting a former President (or his staff )would set a dangerous precedent for Obama when he himself left office, would it not?
Excellent! Thanks, Morrissey…
Looking around for something of interest on Argentina, this morning, I came across this review of a book that documents the history of the anarchist movement of the turn from the 19th to 20th century, one that involved a widespread development of grass roots, direct democracy. The book is by Juan Suriano, Paradoxes of Utopia
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/23799
Suriano attributes the decline of the anarchism movement to a mixture of state repression and the rise of the welfare state, electoral democracy, and, what sounds like the acceptance of unions for negotiating for workers in the workplace:
There are lessons here, with Suiano concluding that there’s no easy route to building direct participant democracy, it’s a long hard process. I don’t know how such a movement can ensure they eventually don’t become victims of “brutal state repression”.
By ensuring that a workers movement has representation in every political party, as well as its own, and all parts of the social fabric of society.
By ensuring that a workers movement has representation in every political party, as well as its own, and all parts of the social fabric of society.
Well that’s kind of what the “neoliberals” did for themselves over the last few decades. So it’s a big task to flush them out, and bring some sense and grass roots democracy back into every section of society.
Climate clowns lose action against NIWA
http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/cases/nz-climate-science-education-trust-v-niwa-ltd/at_download/fileDecision
And the sceptics were so sure of winning 🙄
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/7634556/Climate-sceptics-fail-in-Niwa-case
Leading Climate Scientists Welcome Judge’s Decision
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1209/S00009/leading-climate-scientists-welcome-judges-decision.htm
This release was jointly prepared by, and is endorsed by:
Associate Professor James Renwick, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Jim Salinger, currently visiting Stanford University
Professor Martin Manning, Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Peter Barrett, Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor (Emeritus) Blair Fitzharris, University of Otago
Professor Keith Hunter, Pro-Vice Chancellor Science, University of Otago
Ouch!
Looks as if costs are almost certainly going to be granted against the plaintiff.
Hehehehehe…
They’ll still try and spin this though in their favour 🙁
But stupid does as stupid is…
Barry Brill and, I suspect, the ACT party were behind this nonsense, Brill set up the trust fronting the action. I hope they get screwed with substantial costs.
They’ll just get a donation from Heartland and fellow weasels to cover it probably…
And because this is NZ, the court costs wont be hideous, so it wont be that much sadly :/
Judgment said NIWA are entitled to costs, not only the court.
“The plaintiff does not succeed on any of its challenges to the three decisions of NIWA in issue. The application for judicial review is dismissed and judgment entered for the defendant. [and] The defendant is entitled to costs.”
the ACT party were behind this nonsense
They most assuredly were… lead by that obsessional nincompoop, John Boscawen. It was nothing but an ideologically motivated political ploy to try and embarrass the climate scientists and thus infer global warming to be a fake. They never had a show in hell of succeeding, but their own tunnel-visioned arrogance and self-deceit gave them the lie they would win.
I contributed to a small portion of the data involved, and the checks and balances in place were in strict accordance with WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) guidelines.
They were hoisted by their own ignorance. Ha ha ha ha!
They’ve already tried that and had their arses handed to them. This was the Deniers last chance to stop the truth from winning out.
I hope this story gets a bit of international exposure. It will help discredit these foolish but dangerous global warming deniers.
It doesn’t discourage them though , here are some of the culprits and their cheerleaders, busy spinning defeat into victory.
Warning: You will be entering an alternative reality
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2012/09/judge-declines-to-intervene/
Their intentions are to stop the science saying what they don’t want it to say. Them saying that their intentions are anything else is BS.
And NZ$100000? Pocket money for the people bank-rolling the deniers. They’ve got plenty of trust-funds and stupid idiots to milk for donations.
Ha ha, good job. That’s god punishing you for being a twat Lyn.
Having you around is the real punishment
didja see mccully weaseling out of the marine reserve in the Ross Sea.
these guys will bend over backward for buck.
ooops…better be careful about what I say.
The Standard is back online, Bill Clinton made an awesome speech, and John Pagani is goneburger 😀
A very happy Friday it is 😀
Clinton set the example for Obama, promise to the left, but deliver to the right.
At least Obama didnt totally cave in to the right over health care like Clinton did.
http://annesummers.com.au/speeches/her-rights-at-work-r-rated/
🙁
By the Elder Gods, wtf Australia? You couldn’t even get away with that level of outright, naked misogyny in the US Senate without committing political suicide. Oh and Larry Pickering is one colossal creep /shudder
btw, please put “trigger warning” on stuff like that, some out there haven’t had it easy on this sort of shit 🙁
Where you bin Nick. Good ole godzone led the way on this with the deliberate and well-funded Helenhate campaign of 05-08.
Among other write- and talk-back efforts of note, that nice Cam Slater (son of a National Party president and pushbike partner of the mallard) published pornographic material with Helen’s head attached and along with that nice David Farrar currently appearing on nice Jim Mora’s panel published every possible mysogenistic hatred-inciting comment imagineable including exhortations for her assassination.
Worked a treat. A true kiwi initiative. Our local mysogenistic hatemongering had comparatively limited effect, but: “bitch” never quite segued to the current aussie “witch”, perhaps because Helen had neither red hair, sharp nose, nor intelligence below that of 99% of the population.
Poor old Julia’s doomed. Latest victim of the massive 1950 – 70s US-funded Catholic anti-socialist propaganda efforts now brought to fruition and propogated by the Joyces, Englishes and anti-gay-voting Findlaysons of our day.
And black days too for poor old Jesus. Just as the last corrupt manipulators of His legacy enter their well-deserved hell, their hapless and brain-washed immigrant protegees rally to the hands that feed bread alone and keep the money-changers in the temple. To their own, ultimate, but fantasy-leavened detriment.
But He works in mysterious ways. If we had to give the world Helenhate as a prelude to UN Helen, Labourlite, the Mana Maori Party and GreenLab, perhaps that’s a small price.
Ah, too sleep deprived and not active on the NZ political blog scene until post-Labour 😛
My flatmate Tui actually sort of introduced me to this place I think, or at least the road that lead to it.
I remember some of that too, but it never really made into the mainstream media enough for me to notice it, where as the one is AUS has hit the mainstream at a rather horrifyingly broad level.
And was that a Farrar of Kiwiblog aka the sewer or the one on TV3 who has a massive bias against Labour and who “helped” Chris Carter end his political career?
And Julia’s initial problem was fucking Kevin Rudd’s inability to accept his well deserved fate. He stuffed up and the party made it clear it no longer had confidence in him as the leader. This opened up a hole for the media to exploit and created a fair few issues vis party in-fighting. Which, if it were less of an issue, might have given Gillard more support and allowed the party to fight back against the outright misogynistic bullshit the right has been throwing at her.
Oh, and some of us are atheists 😛
Also on ” intelligence below 99%…” Explain it please, because Gillard very much has a working brain and more apparent intelligence than Ruddkips.
Excellent imo.(big price regretably)
Yeah, sorry about that, will do so in the future.
Reminder call:
ACC legal and moral breaches:
WINZ legal and moral breaches:
http://www.gpcme.co.nz/pdf/2012/Fri_DaVinci_1400_Bratt_Medical Certificates are Clinical Instruments too – June 2012.pdf
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=Dr+David+Bratt+ppt&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CE0QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rgpn.org.nz%2FNetwork%2Fmedia%2Fdocuments%2FConference2011%2FD-Bratt.ppt&ei=pOMqUNyqF–QiQee4oGgBQ&usg=AFQjCNFEdYN_dDW9BAZvZo_cQpC2rFyelg&cad=rja
So THIS is going on in this country, and apparently the majority of the population go along with this, thinking the persons affected are largely maligners and “bludgers”.
What a bloody disgrace this country has become, I’d say! Also there is NO solution for the capable to stay here and partake in a growing, successful economy.
As a migrant from a developed country, I ask why I ever bothered coming back to such a mean spirited, unfair, unsympathetic and bullshit country, selling itself as “clean green”, “humane”, “fair” and whatever, while in reality most are at each other’s throats.
The truth is, that is what happens in a depressed, impoverished, divided and manipulated society. That is what NZ has become. I hate it. Better bloody make sure it changes, or you will lose many more fair minded, educated, reasonable, well qualified and capable people, as you are doing every bloody week.
Key must be put out of office tomorrow, not in two years, MR USELESS SHEARER!
Thank you for that. true